Cara Hammond: Green Vase

The members of Half Happy met in university due to their shared obsessions with Tame Impala, Foals and Radiohead, and followed bands like Superfood and Wolf Alice. In 2022 they made their way into the Cardiff music scene and immediately got attention from BBC Introducing after they released their single ‘Runaway Girl’ in 2023. In the same year they were awarded the Triskel Award at the Welsh Music Prize. The Triskel Award is an award given to the most promising emerging artists of the year. Their music has soft vocals, tight indie drums, and guitar riffs that border heavy and heavenly.

When initially listening to Half Happy’s single ‘Say This Twice’ it seemed like it was mostly talking about a bunch of nonsense however the closer I listened to it the more I started to see the full picture or what I believe to be the full picture. It seems as though it's talking about possibly a one-sided love or maybe a dysfunctional relationship. The song starts with two people driving on a deserted road and is from a man's perspective. One line in the first verse “no conversation stops the killer in its tracks” gives the impression that there's tension between the two people and that a conversation may spark up an argument. Another line “You want her to care the same way as you” seems self-explanatory, this man feels as though the girl doesn’t care about the relationship as much as he does. The second verse switches to the girl's perspective in a setting we assume is their home. One of the first lines from the second verse is “You’re the dancing queen of come on now what’s wrong”. It seems as though this girl avoids the question where she is asked if something is wrong. The line after that “He left the lights on but there's no one home, one more altercation” indicates that even though the man is physically there he may not be there mentally or emotionally which leads to arguments between the two. This is somewhat backed up by the lines “You take the bins out, look up at the sky. His mind is up there and you wonder why” since it seems his mind is somewhere else in the present moment. The final part of the song is from the perspective of the singer. She says ”I've been where you are, your love's up and down. You do everything and it tastes just as sour”. The singer may be pulling from personal experience and is describing how they do everything they can to fix the relationship but nothing they try is working.

The song covers a heavy topic that not many like to discuss, especially publicly. The fact that Half Happy had the confidence the convey the subject in such an open way was almost impressive and begs the question of if their future material will also contain similar topics or if they’ll decide to take it down a peg.